Pondering the South African Memesphere – Looking for the Good in Everything

Let’s Have World Peace

I suppose there might be some warmongers among us that will always enjoy strife. That is of course not a reason to give up trying, reaching out for that ever elusive dream of World Peace.

There are of course a number of things that stand in the way on the path to world peace. A big set of those roadblocks is grouped together under the term “politics”. Politics will always remain. Humans are a diverse species, opinions differ, and our political systems are all about looking for the best compromise.

As is probably obvious, the roadblocks I am most interested in discussing, would be religion. Religion greatly influence politics in many places, I daresay they are even somewhat inseparable. Was the flying of planes into buildings a political matter, or a religious matter?

World peace on the religion front will not be brought about by eradicating religion. The religious will agree on the grounds that God exists, the militant atheists will agree that it will not happen in the foreseeable future, it will take time. Which of the two is true? That is rather irrelevant. What is needed, is for us to break through the communication barriers of this Babel of religions, to develop a “language” with which to understand one another across great cultural differences. Despite different notions of God, many of us are indeed interested in the same thing.

In Christian-speak, this dream of “world peace” would be “making God’s kingdom come… on earth, as it is in heaven”. Bridging chasms in communication requires not judging, but loving your neighbour, living with compassion. At times, it requires turning the other cheek.

I would like some contributions from other religions. How would this ideal, this dream, be worded in Muslim-speak, Jewish-speak, Buddhist-speak, etc? I can go dig through my Jesus and Buddha book to find some interesting tidbits, but my knowledge is pretty much limited to the Christian tradition, unfortunately.

Yes, this is idealistic, but we can dream, can’t we? Let us not stop dreaming.

2 responses so far ↓

Right, so what about atheist-speak? Well, there is great diversity in atheism, just as there is great diversity in Christianity. The militant atheist would claim world peace requires the whole of humanity to live by reason, and do away with the “crutch” that is religion, which is holding us back. I disagree on some grounds, but I also agree on others. No matter what perspective someone might have, you should always be able to find something you agree about.

This post is laying groundwork, sketching out the dream, the goal. We can discuss the specific problems found within religion later.